September 23rd, 2008 — updates, webthings
It is SO VERY HARD to feel any pity whatsoever for Bill O’Reilly (or his loyal website subscribers). The man practically makes a career of loudly and sanctimoniously blaming others for their misfortunes.
I guess the moral of the story is something like this:
A. IF you’re going to base your identity and lifestyle on delivering vicious weekly public diatribes against those who are
- different from you
- less fortunate than you, and/or
- hold diverging political opinions
B. AND IF the groups against whom you rant happen to contain large numbers of people with mad computer hacking skillz
C. AND IF you’re going to make a website for increased efficiency of delivery of said diatribes
D. AND IF you’re going to charge select visitors $49.95 a month to have special privileges on said website…
E. MAYBE you should invest a few bucks in some basic website security.
Passwords stored in plaintext? Srsly? The hacker(s) should be caught and prosecuted, of course; but, Bill, what were ya thinkin’?
(photo from hunterseakerhk on flickr)
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September 6th, 2008 — updates
About 10 years ago, I met a guy at some kind of community festival or something in Columbus, OH. He was running an open-source software booth. He gave me a CD pre-loaded with Red Hat Linux. I never used the CD, but I’ve sort of followed the development of increasingly user-friendly (translate: n00b-friendly) Linux distributions since then. Recently (3 or 4 years back) I decided it was finally worth my while to take the plunge. Note that I still dilly-dallied for a while.
I have an older tower in the back office that I don’t use much, now that I have this spiffy laptop from work. It just got a 500GB second hard drive installed in it, back in May. Last night, I finally rolled up my sleeves and got to work. It turns out Ubuntu is now insanely easy to install. Easier than Windows, in my case. Lots easier. No hardware issues, everything detected perfectly (even the USB ports that are only recognized 1/4 of the time in XP were mounted automatically and with no issues).
The most jarringly pleasant difference from installing Windows was the absence of repeated phone calls to Microsoft’s Genuine Windows Validation Hotline, trying to explain that, no, I was not a skanky software pirate, selling unauthorized multi-terminal licenses of their precious product; I was simply trying to install said bleepenating product on my computer for the fifth time because it kept crashing during install, and would they please unlblock the software I just spent loads of money on and was trying to legally use. Continue reading →
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April 10th, 2008 — photos, updates, webthings
zo-ombie. zo-ombie. zo-ombie ee ee ee…
a) We re-applied for the pittance that was once our DHS grant, today. I knew a guy back in Montana (at the School for the Deaf and Blind) named Paul. He said he used to play singer-songwriter gigs in Seattle (this was when I was 13; I had never seen Seattle). He told me a story about entertaining himself as a child in the 1950s under some bridge or other in the city. He and his friends would toss pennies and nickels to the bums, and watch them fight for the coins. Well, I can imagine the struggle with one’s pride, then deciding that, yes, I still wanted the coin, after all, enough to fight for it. I mean circa-1955 homeless people no disrespect in comparing my plight to theirs.
b) I just read an irreverent, funny, occasionally offensive essay about gender. The thesis seems to be that if women ran the world, it would look remarkably like it currently does. Not that I agreed 100% with everything, but I had some favorite moments:
I’m not trying to say men are any better, because they’re not. They commit most of the murder and mayhem on this planet but frankly, I think that’s just because they have more time on their hands.
A little more thoughtfully (and thought-provokingly):
The exact same testosterone-fueled drive that makes men fight wars also makes them build bridges and tall buildings and computers.
And the slam-dunk to get me all righteously indignant:
I’d really like to know just what in the hell makes Sally Field think women love their children more than men do.
and finally, the piece of resistors:
Even if the best mother EVER was Queen of the Planet, someone somewhere would still need to have their ass kicked, and she’d have to send somebody’s child to do it.
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